The abusive use of antimicrobial drugs during the last eighty years has favoured the natural selection of resistant pathogens able to neutralise drugs efficiently. Nowadays, antimicrobial resistance contributes to millions of deaths yearly, threatens the e ...
Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is a Gram-negative, nonfermenting, environmental bacillus that is an important cause of nosocomial infections, primarily associated with the respiratory tract in the immunocompromised population. Aiming to understand the popula ...
Shooting ranges represent about 10% of polluted sites in Switzerland. This pollution, mainly consisting of lead (Pb) and antimony (Sb), can spread into the local groundwater, wildlife and plants. In this study, shooting range stop butt soils (elevated soil ...
Infections caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria pose an impending threat to humanity, as the evolution of MDR bacteria outpaces the development of effective antibiotics. In this work, we use indium phosphide (InP) quantum dots (QDs) to treat infect ...
The metal-specific CzcRS two-component system in Pseudomonas aeruginosa is involved in the repression of the OprD porin, causing in turn carbapenem antibiotic resistance in the presence of high zinc concentration. It has also been shown that CzcR is able t ...
To address limitations in the production of DNA aptamers against small molecules, we introduce a DNA-based capture-SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) protocol with long and continuous randomized library for more flexibility, ...
The widespread use of antibiotics and antifungal drugs has provoked an increasing number
of multi-resistant bacteria and fungi. The emergence of multiresistance to antibiotics has
been now recognized as a very serious public health issue. In order to targe ...
Worldwide, tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death due to infection with a single pathogenic agent, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In the absence of an effective vaccine, new, more powerful antibiotics are required to halt the growing spread of multid ...
The main goals of this thesis pertain to the development of a device capable of detecting microorganism viability through monitoring the oscillations of
a microscopic cantilever transducer, to improve the presently used device and to attempt to explain in ...
Various strategies have been proposed and applied to prepare antibacterial materials able to respond to different requirements specific for antibacterial applications. Among diverse strategies the approach based on substrates modification with polymer brus ...
